autonomous Articles, Stories & News

From Toyota AI blog: The companys products work with vessels of all sizes including workboats, merchant container ships, and even cruise ships. Whats more, they support both existing and new marine vessels.

The ins and outs of the technology can admittedly get very complicated but, essentially, autonomous robots are a fusion of (sometimes artificially intelligent) software, physical robotics hardware, and sensors.

With this new application in mobile robotics, the company plans to use its Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology combined with deep learning and to pioneer in a new generation of robots.

The worlds leading driverless technology conference, AutoSens (http://www.auto-sens.com), has teamed up with British start-up Self Driving Track Days (http://www.selfdrivingtrackdays.com) to deliver industry-backed test-track events and training workshops for students, SMEs, engineers and technologists wanting to learn about autonomous vehicles.

Bob Violino for ZDNet: Autonomous robots can perform actions or complete tasks with a high degree of autonomy, which makes them ideal for applications such as space exploration or cleaning your living room carpet. Mobile robots are capable of moving from place to place.
Put these capabilities together and you got a powerful machine that can handle lots of tasks in industrial environments such as factories, as well as in hospitals, hotels, and other areas. And, in fact, one of the more prominent trends in robotics today is the growing popularity of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), with new vendors jumping into the market and sales on the rise.
AMRs are modular, self-driving mobile robots that can be used for a variety of business applications, such as locomotion, mapping, navigation, and inspection. Cont'd...

Ford and the University of Michigan today announce they are teaming up to accelerate autonomous vehicle research and development with a first-ever arrangement that embeds Ford researchers and engineers into a new state-of-the-art robotics laboratory on U-M's Ann Arbor campus.
While the new robotics laboratory opens in 2020, by the end of this year Ford will move a dozen researchers into the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC).
The announcement is the latest in a series of actions by Ford as it moves toward having fully autonomous SAE-defined level 4-capable vehicles available for high-volume commercial use in 2021. Autonomous vehicles are part of Ford's expansion to be an auto and a mobility company. Full Press Release:

Evan Ackerman for IEEE Spectrum: At Georgia Tech, Li Wang and professors Aaron D. Ames and Magnus Egerstedt have been developing ways to allow infinitely large teams of mobile robots to move around each other without colliding, and also without getting in each other’s way. This is very important for people like me, who have 37Roombas at home, but also for anyone imagining a future where roads are packed with autonomous cars.
The fundamental issue here is robot paranoia. When robots move around, they typically maintain a sensor-based “panic zone” for safety, and if anything enters that space, they panic, and stop moving. If you have only two robots moving around, they can keep clear of one another, but as the number of robots increases, the odds that two “panic zones” will intersect also increases, to the point where they overlap and you just end up with a completely paralyzing global robot freakout. Or as the Georgia Tech researchers put it (in a much fancier way), “as the number of robots and the complexity of the task increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to design one single controller that simultaneously achieves multiple objectives, e.g., forming shapes, collision avoidance, and connectivity maintenance.” Cont'd...

Time Domain is the leading provider of small, low-power UWB ranging radio and radar sensors which measure distance with an accuracy of 2 centimeters, send data, and detect objects, people and obstacles. 5D has partnered with Time Domain since 2012, adapting the latters PulsON® ranging radios into precision autonomous navigation and positioning solutions for a wide variety of air and ground vehicles.

Europes most important ADAS conference, AutoSens, (http://auto-sens.com) has confirmed an impressive speaker line-up for this years event, which will take place in September in Belgium, with big names from OEM, Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers.

Tina Amirtha for Benelux: In 2014, three software engineers decided to create a drone company in Wavre, Belgium, just outside Brussels. All were licensed pilots and trained in NATO security techniques.
But rather than build drones themselves, they decided they would upgrade existing radio-controlled civilian drones with an ultra-secure software layer to allow the devices to fly autonomously.
Their company, EagleEye Systems, would manufacture the onboard computer and design the software, while existing manufacturers would provide the drone body and sensors.
Fast-forward to the end of March this year, when the company received a Section 333 exemption from the US Federal Aviation Administration to operate and sell its brand of autonomous drones in the US. The decision came amid expectations that the FAA will loosen its restrictions on legal drone operations and issue new rules to allow drones to fly above crowds. Cont'd...

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